


overslept

by zenexit



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: ADHD, Author Projecting onto Richie Tozier, Canon Compliant, Growing Up, Hurt No Comfort, Hypersomnia, References to Depression, Untreated Mental Illness, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22441549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenexit/pseuds/zenexit
Summary: Something Maggie Tozier would often try to repeat to young Richie, is how much harder people would listen to his words if he wasn’t yelling them. Something he never quite could get his head around. How were people supposed to listen harder then, when they already seemed to be working so hard to ignore him even when he yelled?
Kudos: 12





	overslept

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a short read (hopefully) and was meant to just be a combination of my own experiences and projections, and headcanons of richie. i have adhd and this is mostly just a vent fic and expression through him.
> 
> also cant believe "author projecting onto richie tozier" is already a tag title i just get to also use?

When Richie was a kid, smaller and somehow even worse than when he had met the losers, his teachers had wanted to strangle him just as much. He had a hard time being ignored, deciding instead to just repeat the question louder and louder until he was answered. When his parents and teachers got upset, Richie just got more confused. It was never meant to be an attack when he did this, something only his parents seemed to understand. Something Maggie Tozier would often try to repeat to young Richie, is how much harder people would listen to his words if he wasn’t yelling them. Something he never quite could get his head around. How were people supposed to listen harder then, when they already seemed to be working so hard to ignore him even when he yelled? It was something that taught Richie to yell and speak with his mouth first over all else, and made his insides feel more hollow over in the process. 

There was a time when Richie was around the age of 6, sitting behind an elementary school’s small wooden desk, when someone had broken into his school with a knife. The small town of Derry did what all towns did, and went into lock-down. Richie stood there defiant, while other students were hiding under their desks as they had been taught with the lights off. Richie loudly proclaimed this was all fake. It was a lie, a scam, a tall tale. He had nothing but the best intentions in doing it, in trying to rally his fellow second graders against _ The Man _ , but what he had unknowingly done was just added more tinder to the funeral pyre of his life. Instead of looking like a comic book hero, he had just looked like an idiot. 

When Richie was first called Trashmouth, he really hadn’t been that impressed with it as a nickname. It didn’t seem that clever, and more than anything it almost felt like a compliment. Or at least, at first. When Richie became known for only running his mouth, when it stopped people from wanting to be his friends or be around him, then it kind of meant something a little different. It stopped feeling so fun. Richie started to get then, finally, that his voice and the things he said were bothering others. Like any young boy filled with anger and rejection, it did the opposite of shutting him up, teaching him to run his mouth more. Even if in the back of his head sometimes he could hear little comments from his teachers still ring out. Snide remarks asking if his jaw ever hurt. He could see the eye rolls he faced in class from both his teachers and peers, he could feel the rejection still like it was fresh over everyone pushing him away, being sick of him, while he was desperately clawing at trying to be liked. Even at a time when he was just a child, and couldn’t truly begin to understand how it was hurting.

Growing older didn’t really help either. Life moved on and Richie moved out of Derry with his family, for better or for worse. School went from easy to frustrating. Not because it became less easy, because all in all it was still a breeze of easy concepts and easy A’s. He went to summer school in middle school, a punishment for the one class he’d finally decided to not bother with, boredly enjoying fucking around with the other kids over learning anything. When High School came around, Richie found it to be the last on his list of to dos.There was no reason he felt he should care. Richie found himself sleeping through remedial classes which he proceeded to passing with outstanding marks. There was no challenge in literally any of his subjects, easy or not, so it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what classes he took if they all felt exactly the same, at least in this one he got to catch up on sleep. Richie didn’t want to go to college, so what did his grades matter? He found himself skipping classes he was excited to take, tiredly playing solitaire in the school bathroom stalls instead of going to class. Maybe it was depression, but Richie didn’t really think he had all that much to be sad about. He did pass his classes though, like he always did, with little effort. When he had moved onto college, before Richie dropped out completely. Richie wasn’t doing bad per say… He just wasn’t doing anything. He had no idea what he wanted to do in college, so it was hard to stay motivated. In the end, he just worked constantly while going to school and ended up doing bad at both. 

When Richie left college, dropping out and disappointing his parents like he always knew he would, he ended up mostly floating from place to place. The first move had been a brash trip to California, blowing all his money on an expensive move he hadn’t planned out. He lived on the road in his own car, or in cheap motels, or occasionally in an apartment if he could find one for cheap enough. It was lonely. It was working nights, and suffering by himself. Richie spent all days off wasting away in a sense, laying on the couch. Any day off was spent sleeping all day. He would wake up, hungry, and decided it wasn’t worth it to do anything else. Maybe crawling out of bed to grab fast food and getting back in. Richie learned then the more he slept, the more he would want to keep sleeping. Maybe, sometimes, when he wasn’t feeling horrible dread filled evenings, when he was awake, when he knew he should be doing otherwise, he would sit and write. He would write jokes, stand-up, stories, anything. The kind of stuff he could tell at bars and get loud rancorous applause. 

Richie started to do better at it then, comedy. He got more people who would ask when his next show was, where it would be. People who would want to find him. He’d laugh and smile and give an answer, but a lead feeling filled his gut. He kept distracting from the pain, doing other things to juggle time. Feeling tired became the norm, and it wasn’t from sleepless nights. 12 or 14 hours of sleep in a day just became Richie's life. Richie’s empty haunting life, where he laid in beds while his body got too hot. Completely alone he would strip down the blankets and lay face down, covered in his own sweat while he just laid there silently. He would flip and move and writhe, ruining his bed sheets and ripping them off. Leaving them there like that for more nights to come. It was piles of clothes in an apartment he could somehow afford, that he wasn’t used to feeling like he should be in. Richie had put in work, to become known for his comedy, and to be liked for it. But to him, it hadn’t felt like work, so none of this felt deserved. Richie Tozier wasn’t sure what trying his best felt like, but he was positive it wasn’t this. So when Maggie and Wentworth Tozier would call, checking in on their loving son, Richie would just smile and nod and tell them every good thing that had happened. Trying desperately to gain their approval, hoping it would fill a void. A void he would sink right back into when the phone was hung up, when the glow was gone. When Richie was left with putting down that mask he showed to sink back into his own couch cushions. 

It wasn’t all some big depressed pity party though. If anything, it was rarely that. Only that when Richie burned away days and nights seeking so skip forward in time. If anything, Richie had a bit of a problem with signing up for too many things. In his newfound career that he had stumbled upon, it worked out a bit better. But before that, it was signing up for anything people needed help with. Richie knew his ‘kindness’ would surprise his new friends, whose names he would forget when it came time to feel worthless, and it would fill him with something for a moment. He would feel stimulated, and better. It would feel like he was doing something. But the moment the project was over, or Richie was done seeing faces that couldn’t even appear in his own tired dreams, he would go back to his apartment and sit there. Facing cold tile floors, much nicer and cleaner than the last place he had lived in, as now for some inconceivable reason he could afford to pay someone to clean his home so he wouldn’t have to. When there was something to do in the day, Richie felt like he had a purpose. The moment that was over though, he would be sitting in his home waiting for something to happen or something to instigate. He might not know the word or the feeling, but he’d sit in limbo waiting for a task to start itself that never would. Maybe Richie would put something on the TV, something distracting and bright. Maybe he would pick up a book or a game. But Richie always ended it the same, leaning over himself and reading things on his dulled phone screen before deciding he would rather go back to his bed to writhe in a sleep that felt more like purgatory. 

It wasn’t a bad existence, as it was the only one Richie had ever known. On paper he was smiley and friendly, personable asshole with a tendency to overstep every boundary that had ever existed. But it was a face, in a way, that Richie wasn’t sure himself how much was real or fake. 


End file.
